May - Jun 2003 Issue

 At the South Head, Grand MananAlfred Thompson Bricher (American, 1837-1908)

 

 

New M.B.A. recipients from some of the nation's top business schools, including Duke's, will turn their backs on dot-coms and Internet companies after graduation in favor of "career advancement" and personal fulfillment at established companies, according to a nationwide survey of more than 800 students by Duke's Fuqua School of Business.

 On the morning of April 10, a Thursday, David Fowler, owner of the Duke Barbershop, went to work in the basement of the West Union building as he has for the last forty-four years. By noon he had trimmed sides, thinned shags, snipped sprouts, flattened tops, shortened burns, and, generally, as they say in the trade, "lowered ears."

Four Duke students who intend to pursue careers in science, mathematics, or engineering have been awarded prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarships, which recognize academic achievements and encourage students to continue work in those fields.This year's winners are Ethan D. Eade of Maryland, Lauren M. Childs of New Jersey, Margaret J. Wat of North Carolina, and Linda Zhang of Tennessee.

The director of Duke's Wetland Center, Curtis Richardson, wants to visit Iraq this summer as part of an effort to restore some of the Mesopotamian marshlands, a crucial wildlife sanctuary and home to an ancient human culture that has been largely destroyed by upstream water removal and deliberate government depredations.

 Court CausesEditors:As a former member of DUMB, I enjoyed Patrick Adams' piece ["Boumpani, the Wise DUMB Director," January-February 2003]. However, the article contains an erroneous date that any Duke basketball fan will immediately recognize.

At a time when most of her contemporaries have long since given up office hours in favor of tee times, ninety-year-old Margaret Burns continues to see psychiatric patients in her native Asheville on a part-time basis.

Kevin Sack '81 now has some symmetry for his office bookcase: another Pulitzer Prize, to go with the 2001 Pulitzer awarded to him and other New York Times reporters for the fifteen-part series "How Race Is Lived in America." Sack wrote the lead article and later did a commissioned piece for Duke Magazine about the project.

I'm an editor at ISLANDS, a little sleeper of a travel magazine drooled over for its photography but quietly prized for its lyrical narrative w

William H. Chafe, dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences and vice provost for undergraduate education, will leave his administrative posts on June 30, 2004. Chafe, who came to Duke as a professor in the history department in 1971, has been dean for nine years and vice provost for three years. He plans to continue teaching history at Duke.

To get to know Ray Nasher, it helps to don a hardhat and do a construction-site circuit. That is, two construction-site circuits: Nasher is the prime patron of museums in progress at Duke, from which he graduated in 1943, and in Dallas, his adopted hometown.

You might imagine that running a university press would be like playing the stock market, angling for the big win: You patiently invest in scholars, waiting for the one book that will take the intellectual marketplace by storm, dictate a new wave of public policy, or anticipate the next Big Idea.

La Paz, Bolivia

Someone unfamiliar with women's basketball might never have heard the name Goestenkors. This would be forgivable: Goestenkors is an unusual name, German and long and pronounced a bit differently (guess-ten-course) from the way it appears. And it would be understandable, given that the coach has risen so rapidly to the top that one might have seen just a blue streak of success.

Justin Segall and Anthony Vitarelli are explaining what not to say if you are out to win support for a grassroots environmental movement--especially if, like them, you're a couple of sophomores trying to get the powers-that-be to take you seriously.

Attendance by the classes of 1973, 1978, and 1983 broke all records for thirtieth, twenty-fifth, and twentieth reunions, respectively, as thirteen separate classes--3,233 strong--came back to campus in April.This year, classes celebrating their fifty-fifth and sixtieth reunions held their own get-togethers. The Half-Century

 President's House: honoring its first residents

Just five months before his death, in July 1517, Cardinal Francisco Ximénez de Cisneros, Archbishop of Toledo, celebrated the completion of his six-volume Complutensian Polyglot Bible. Of the 600 sets originally printed, only 123 are known to have survived. Twenty are in the United States, and one of these is owned by Duke.

Check, please: Duke's dining room closes. Photo: Duke University Archives

-Fredric Jameson, who is stepping down as chair of Duke's Literature Program, was honored with a four-day conference in April on Utopia, one of the recurring themes in his work. Over the past thirty years, he has helped change the field of literary theory. He was one of the first scholars to bring French theory to the United States, introducing thinkers such as Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze in a sympathetic but rigorous way.

 

Rankin: man of a thousand words. photo: Les Todd

Amid concerns over Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Duke officials have decided to cancel their summer study-abroad program in Beijing and are developing an alternate program for students. And the university has strongly urged all members of the Duke community to avoid non-essential travel to countries affected by SARS, as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.

Duke Magazine, published by the Alumni Affairs office, has been named one of the nation's top ten university magazines for 2002, garnering gold and bronze medals in a national competition and two design awards in a regional competition sponsored by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE).

Laryngitis kept U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan from addressing Duke graduates, but it didn't prevent the students from hearing Annan's message. President Nannerl O. Keohane read portions of Annan's speech at the May 11 ceremony, after the scheduled commencement speaker was forced to cancel his appearance.

Two Duke scholars have collected the writings of "lost" author Zitkala-Sa, a Lakota woman who wrote about Indian life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for publication in a Penguin Classics edition. Cathy N. Davidon, Ruth F.

 Nikki JusuRising junior, Chronicle columnist on race relations, screenwriter, poet Describe yourself in three words:

On a rainy Mother's Day in 1972, Clarence Newsome became the first black student to give Duke's commencement address, sharing the stage with keynote speaker Walter Cronkite.

 

Duke's new presidential search committee "hasn't discussed a single name yet," according to its leader, but has received more than a hundred letters or messages with names, advice, and comments from members of the Duke community.

When I was growing up, art wasn't a cool-kids' passion. But over time, one develops good sense and more refined sensibilities (at least about some things). Now, my vacation destinations hinge on museum offerings--Caravaggio in Rome, Monet in New York, Sargent in Denver, Picasso and Matisse in London.

 Pop Quiz We asked several students: What are your plans for the summer?